Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

FlexPod XCS vs HPE SimpliVity comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

FlexPod XCS
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (5th)
HPE SimpliVity
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
154
Ranking in other categories
HCI (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. FlexPod XCS is designed for Converged Infrastructure and holds a mindshare of 9.2%, down 9.7% compared to last year.
HPE SimpliVity, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 8.6% mindshare, down 10.2% since last year.
Converged Infrastructure
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Enforces standardized setup procedures following Certified Validated Design (CVD) guidelines and offers greater flexibility and control over the system compared to traditional systems
The GUI setup follows the right setup, meaning we have to follow the CVDi.e. Certified Validated Design. Everything is clear, because you can build CI yourself, but without rules, it can be messy. With FlexPod, there are rules to follow, making it more standardized. This helps with troubleshooting and compatibility assessments, simplifying troubleshooting significantly. We also use FlexPod pre-validated architectures to validate the design. It is very, very important to us because we had a bad case in 2015 where separate items integrated poorly due to no version or firmware compatibility certification. Troubleshooting became a nightmare. So, standards are crucial for us, and everything entering production should be verified or at least documented for certification.
Mohammed Lokman Hossen - PeerSpot reviewer
Has integrated solutions and rapid recovery made management smoother and more reliable
There is the latest update from HPE regarding HPE SimpliVity. For virtualization, HPE has to depend on other manufacturers, OEMs such as VMware or Hyper-V. Recently, HPE declared the VM essential virtualization solution. In the future, if HPE integrates HPE SimpliVity with VM essential, that will be a great combination. Functionality-wise, I am totally satisfied with HPE SimpliVity, but for improvement, if HPE integrates its own virtualization solution, this combination and integration will be beneficial because this integration can be configured with the cloud-based system. A VM can be uploaded to the cloud from this, which will be advantageous for backup to other sites.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The ease at which it scales and its redundancy factors. It's extremely redundant and easy-to-scale."
"It is extremely stable and well-supported because of the leadership and partnerships put in place."
"High availability is outstanding. We haven't had any problems with that."
"The solution has decreased the unplanned downtime incidents in our organization by 25 to 30 percent."
"The ability to converge a lot of different data and platforms into a single common platform, then scale horizontally and vertically."
"Gives us a single point of contact for support."
"It is easy to deploy, works well, the reps are good, and the support is great."
"It allowed us to scale out as our business grew without any issues."
"It has lessened our burden on multiple different products, so they are under one umbrella. This has been economically good."
"HPE SimpliVity is a very valuable and effective solution. It's also a scalable solution. As the customer requirements and application requirements increase, it can scale to accommodate them."
"It doesn't take long to mount the entire VM somewhere and then copy it. That's one of the things that I like about SimpliVity's deduplication and compression. I can literally stand up a backup in minutes. It is like no time at all. They've got pretty phenomenal deduplication and compression. Within SimpliVity, one of the things that they do is deduplication and compression on ingestion. So, on the front side, everything is deduplicated and compressed, which, of course, adds some overhead to their solution. For instance, in my environment today, I've got roughly 30 terabytes of raw storage, and with their deduplication and compression, I'm over the 300 terabyte threshold with my active servers and all my backups."
"The rate of compression for the data in SimpliVity is the most valuable feature."
"It is a stable solution."
"In terms of HPE SimpliVity's most valuable features, its backup integration is a good thing. Its performance is very good as is the whole integration."
"What I like about the solution, is that SimpliVity is easy to deploy and maintain. It's really performing very well. The ratio of price to performance is really good."
"It is easy to set up."
 

Cons

"It takes a very sophisticated group of people to run and maintain NetApp and Cisco products."
"The solution has not reduced our data center costs."
"I had one problem at the site where I had an aggregate that would not shrink after I had deleted some stuff. It took a few tries to get the right guy on the call. We do have a NetApp SAM with our company, and it really took getting to him to get the solution fixed."
"I would be interested to see more integration with other applications."
"One touch upgrades would be nice."
"There could be room for improvement in terms of offering more flexibility in CBD options."
"Cisco support is much slower. Opening cases with Cisco tech is sometimes a bit tedious. The return time for less important calls can be slower. Even Priority 1 calls can sometimes be a bit long and they will have to call me back."
"We don't see the much DR capability within the FlexPod so for that, we have to maintain our own DR capability with DSRM."
"In terms of what I would define as a perfect solution, I am looking for one that is easy to manage, has a real user-friendly interface, and something that is not too complex."
"There may be issues around scaling."
"It would be better if we could deploy a hybrid cloud integrated to SimpliVity."
"Upgrading can be complicated."
"The biggest feature, which should be included, is some method to handle archival backup or cloud-based backup. Where SimpliVIty typically falls down with their data structure is: The longer a backup is kept, the more space it ends up inevitably using. When you get into things that you have to keep for five or seven years for legal requirements or regulatory compliance, then you start taking up a lot of space with these old dead backups that you are probably never going to use again. Being able to offload those to a separate platform or cloud storage location would be ideal."
"SimpliVity has this thing where if a virtual machine is on the wrong node with two nodes, it will be optimized. However, if one of the nodes won't be optimized, then it will complain about that. It will give you a little warning to say the source is not optimized. Please move this to one of the other hosts. They should just add a little thing in SimpliVity to move all the VMs to the right host, because it is a pain to load balance across the three nodes when all these VMs are complaining and you have to move them to one."
"Scalability is something that needs to be improved because if you need more storage then you have to add more nodes."
"While it has been a while since HPE acquired SimpliVity, there is a lack of understanding/awareness about the product. In short, it took me time to actually make them understand they had a product named SimpliVity, which as you can imagine does not instill a great deal of confidence."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Because the solution is now stable, we are saving about $100 million USD a year."
"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."
"We have seen a five to ten percent savings on new service deployments."
"We definitely saw a lot of operational cost savings using FlexPod. As far as capital outlay goes, that was a little bit too much for us to swallow and we weren't able to recognize enough savings in that area to afford it."
"It is not cheap, but there is a return on investment in time saved and efficiency."
"We have saved 50 percent on new service deployments."
"Buy storage based on the solutions you need, the technologies you need, and what will make your life a lot easier down the road."
"Sometimes you may end up spending a little more to get it in the first place, but you gain it back in terms of infrastructure upgrade costs and troubleshooting costs. The solution also lasts a surprisingly long time."
"Its licensing is yearly."
"In terms of the licenses, customers do not actually get any benefit."
"Its price is pretty good as compared to the other solutions, but it is quite expensive if we compare it with non-HCI solutions."
"If we compare the price of HPE SimpliVity with other vendors that are selling the hyper-converged infrastructure, all of them are not cheap and are priced similarly. However, the price we pay and what we receive makes it a good price."
"Cost of this product is high."
"Customers always complain that SimpliVity is a little bit higher in price point as compared to other solutions available in the market."
"It is expensive for this market. Everyone says that it is a very good product, but the only complaint is about the price."
"There are additional costs for storage."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Converged Infrastructure solutions are best for your needs.
861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 30, 2015
Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod
Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
20%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Educational Organization
29%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about FlexPod?
The system is designed for easy scaling. Because we define everything clearly. So when we plug the system in, we apply the profile, and it scales easily.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FlexPod?
The pricing is not cheaper, but stability is more important for us now. We focus on business gains, not static numbers. Following XCS rules ensures a stable environment, which is crucial. For me, C...
What needs improvement with FlexPod?
FlexPod should focus more on automation. Integrating an automation tool with FlexPod would enable customers to leverage automation capabilities. More automation would be helpful. Currently, we cont...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...
What do you like most about HPE SimpliVity?
The solution's technical support is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE SimpliVity?
The price is almost equal to VMware vSAN, making it not much cost saving. However, the time-saving during upgrades is notable.
 

Also Known As

No data available
SimpliVity, HPE HCI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
Red Bull Racing, Mandarin Oriental, Brigham Young University, UCLA, Merlin Entertainments, Sasa Cosmetics, Travelport, St. John’s Riverside Hospital, Princess House
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle and others in Converged Infrastructure. Updated: June 2025.
861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.